University of California, Merced – Bobcats Advance to Championship Game After Sweeping Westcliff

SAN MARCOS, Calif. – The third-seeded University of California, Merced men’s volleyball team tallied a season-high eleven blocks to sweep second-seeded Westcliff University in the California Pacific Conference Championship semifinals, 3-0 (25-19, 25-21, 25-20) on Friday afternoon at the USK Sports Complex.

The Bobcats (10-9) sweep was their first ever in postseason play and head coach Ai Prachumsri‘s team will play for the tournament championship and an automatic bid to the NAIA Championship on Saturday, April 2 at 4:00pm against the top-seed Benedictine University Mesa Redhawks.

The Bobcats eleven blocks was the most since January 17, 2020 and the most in a three-set match since a postseason affair against BenU Mesa on April 7, 2017.

Freshman Brennan Taylor led the way with a career-high seven blocks and tied Samuel Hala’ufia for the program postseason single-match record. Three of Taylor’s blocks were solo, tying Emmanual Egun’s for the team’s postseason record.

Taylor also had three kills without an error in the sweep.

3X Cal Pac Setter of the Year Ryan Steele ran the Bobcats offense to a postseason program record .299 success rate and stuffed the stat sheet with 30 assists, a season-high seven kills, six digs and three blocks.

Lance Nua continued his career-year and held match-high with 12 kills on a .357 hitting percentage. Nua’s 12-kill performance marked his fifth double figure kill outing of the season.

Chris Morikawa and Ryan Kilgore were good for seven kills each. Morikawa, the Cal Pac Attacker of the Year, also had eight digs, a service ace and a solo block. Kilgore had two solo blocks.

Cal Pac honorable mention Zach Brill shared match-high with nine digs.

Other individual notables include a solo block from Colin Ryan and a service ace from Jozef Lingenfelter.

The Bobcats first five points of the semifinal all came via the kill and UC Merced led for the entire opening set. The Bobcats led by five points at 11-6 and by as many as eight points at 15-7 after back-to-back kills from Morikawa and Steele. The Bobcats were the first team to 20, and soon after hitting that mark, reeled off three straight points to win the opening set wire-to-wire.

UC Merced was forced to play from behind in the second set. Steele rallied the Bobcats from an early four-point deficit to come within a point at 10-9. Then trailing 16-14, Morikawa embarked on a strong service run and his ace gave the Bobcats their first lead of the set at…